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HINTS ON BIBLE STUDY. 



Dr. CLIFFORD, M.A. 
Professor ELMSLIE, D.D. 
R. F. HORTON, M.A. 
Rev. F. B. MEYER, B.A. 



BY 




Rev. C. H. WALLER, M.A. 
Rev. H. C. G. MOULE, M.A. 
Rev. C. A. BERRY. 
Rev. W. J. DAWSON. 



Prop. HENRY DRUMMOND, F.R.S.E. 



/ 7 



6 




: : Fleming 1b. IRevell : : 



New York : 
12 bible house, astor place. 



Chicago : 
148 and 150 madison ctreet, 



= publisher of Evangelical Xiterature = 



h 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, by 

FLEMING H. REYELL, 

In the Omce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



TK-: ECONOMIST PflESS, 330 PEARL ST., N. Y. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. By Dr. CLIFFORD, M.A. . . . . . I 

II. By Rev. C. H. WALLER, M.A., Principal of St 

John's Hall, Highbury ...... 8 

III. By Professor ELMSLIE, D.D 21 

IV. By Rev. H. C. G. MOULE, M.A., Principal of Ridley 

Hall, Cambridge . . . . . . .28 

V. By R. F. HORTON, M.A. . . . . .39 

VI. By Rev. CHARLES A. BERRY .... 43 

VII. By Rev. F. B. MEYER, B.A. . . . .51 

VIII. By Rev. W. J. DAWSON ..... 60 



EDITOE'S PEEFACE. 



As Sir Walter Scott lay on a couch in his library, 
looking out upon the Tweed, and wondering how 
many hours would elapse before life's lamp would 
go out, he asked a friend to read to him. " What 
book would you like ? " said Lockhart, as he looked 
at the 20,000 beautiful volumes carefully arranged 
round the walls. " Need you ask ? " said Sir 
Walter ; " there is but one." And so the Bible was 
brought, and the sick man was comforted by the 
sweet sayings of the Man of Nazareth. 

The great author was right. There is but one 
Book that can at once teach the little child and 
guide the great statesman ; that can lift whole 
nations out of their savagery, strike the manacles 
from the slave, and pour forth a flood of human 
happiness upon the world. This Book kills cowardice 
and purifies ambition. It tears the mask from the 
scoundrel's voluptuous face and reveals his villainy. 
It makes men socially sweet and morally clean, 



iv EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

and guides them through this perilous and tumul- 
tuous life right into the safety of heaven's own 
harbour. 

" But one Book " — and yet it is the very Book 
which we most of all neglect. No book is treated 
so badly as the Bible. We buy a novel — often full 
of sickly sentimentality or sanguinary sensationalism 
— and, beginning with the title-page, we go care- 
fully through the volume, reading even preface and 
dedication, and hardly missing the advertisements. 
But the grand old Bible — God's eternal Book — is 
taken up at uncertain intervals, and some familiar 
passage is merely scanned in the most carders and 
slipshod style. Who ever thinks of beginning at 
the first chapter of Genesis and reading steadily 
through to Bevelation, putting all prejudice on one 
side, and trying to find out the main purpose, the 
central meaning, the vital message, of the Book ? 
And yet that is the way to read the Bible. " I 
believe it would startle and move any one," says 
Mr. B. L Stevenson, referring to the Gospel of St. 
Matthew, "if they could make a certain effort of 
imagination, and read it freshly like a book, not 
droningly and dully like a portion of the Bible." 
Why not try the experiment ? 

In sending forth this volume we would specially 
urge upon the young the duty as well as the delight 



EDITOR 'S PREFA CE. t 

of systematic Bible-study. Some parts of God's 
great Book they may scarcely understand, for there 
are passages in the Bible which can only be read 
through tears. In the brightness and buoyancy of 
youth men often pass them over and revel in the 
thrilling biographies and soul-stirring stories — the 
sound of which is like the tramp of armed men — 
all movement and excitement. But life is hard, 
and we soon come to rough roads and weary ways. 
When the day is all darkness and the night all 
pain, " there is but one Book " — the Book which 
contains the wondrous message of the great love 
of God. "Bead your Bible," said Mr. Kuskin, in 
addressing the students at Oxford, " making it the 
first morning business of your life to understand 
some portion of it clearly, and your daily business 
to obey it in all that you do understand. To my 
early knowledge of the Bible I owe the best part 
of my taste in literature, and the most precious, 
and, on the whole, the one essential part of my 
education." 

F. A. A. 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 



i. 

£r Dr. CLIFFORD, M.A. 

I. Although nothing is more obvious, yet I 
must insist at the outset on the urgent necessity 
for a definite recognition of the fact that the Bible 
demands, as well as deserves and rewards, intelli- 
gent and strenuous study. Its main teachings 
are so luminous, and its language is so familiar 
through long use, that we forget that every page 
offers precious materials to earnest search, and 
golden gains to those who will patiently and wisely 
toil. Euskin is not a whit too severe when he 
says in his " Ethics of the Dust : " " The way the 
common people read their Bibles is just like the 
way the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. 
They rolled themselves (it was said) over and over 
where the grapes lay on the ground. What first 



2 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

stuck to their spines they carried off and ate. So 
your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and 
over their Bibles, and declare whatever sticks to 
their spines is Scripture, and that nothing else is." 
"But," he adds, "you can only get the skins of 
the texts that way ; if you want their juice you 
must press them in cluster." We must "strive to 
enter in by the narrow door " of the Kingdom of 
Revelation, for many think to dream their way 
therein, and are not able. The Bible will not give 
its best treasures to indolence, or even to trans- 
parent sincerity and intense devotion, indispensable 
as they are. Study is requisite — clear-sighted, 
methodical, scientific study — if we are resolved to 
know what is and what is not the real word God 
has spoken to men. There is no " royal road " to 
the knowledge of the Word. We must " search 
the Scriptures " if we are bent on using its opulent 
ideas and divine inspiration in building up a 
manly life. Knowledge gained from the great 
Christian tradition, the current talk of the Churches 
and of the press, has its service, but it must 
never be permitted to take the place of the sifted, 
methodised, and personally tested acquisitions each 
man should make for himself by diligent and pains- 
taking study. The goodly pearls are to be had if 
we are willing to pay for them. 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 3 

2. The Jirst thing needful to the man resolved 
to study the Bible aright is to obtain from the best 
means at his disposal the strict, exact, and full 
meaning of the words employed by the sacred 
writer, free from all personal colouring and theo- 
logical bias, and stated with scrupulous fidelity to 
grammar and lexicon, to custom and history, to the 
ascertained mood and purpose of the writer, and 
to the conditions and aspirations of the recipients 
of his message. This is fundamental. Eeverence 
for the wonderful Book ought to create a hallowed 
dread of adding to or taking away from the Spirit- 
filled contents of the words of Scripture ; and yet 
it is notorious that no book has suffered more from 
the uncritical and irrational treatment it has 
received from its readers and admirers. That 
typical expositor, Prof. Cheyne, writes : " The better 
a reader understands the historical sense, the more 
likely he is to find out the best spiritual sense." 
It is the Biblical idea that is fruitful and repro- 
ductive. In it is life. No pains therefore may 
be spared to make sure that we have it. We owe 
at once to the book and to ourselves all that is 
necessary to get, at any cost, the exact meaning of 
the word of God. 

3. Therefore, speaking broadly but still accu- 
rately, we must study the contents of the Bible in 



4 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

the same way as we do those of any other book, say 
Milton's " Paradise Lost," or Tyndall on " Heat," 
or Green's " History of the English People," with 
(a) the same resolute detachment of mind ; (b) the 
s;ime readiness to defer to rightful authority; (c) 
t he same use of the best tools which can be had ; 
(d) the same strong sympathy with the subject on 
^vhich the writers treat, the spirit they breathe and 
the purpose they seek to realise. " Men spake, 
or wrote the - Scriptures/ as they were moved 
by the Holy Ghost;" but they were men, and 
their words can only be accurately explained and 
fully understood as the ordinary, literary, textual 
and critical methods of study are faithfully applied. 
For us the Eevelation is in an English " earthen 
vessel," and we must derive the contents of the vessel 
by the same processes we use with Milton's poems, 
Tyndall's science, or Green's story of our ancestors. 
4. I do not know anything more difficult or 
more urgent in Biblical study than perfect " detach- 
ment of mind," a going directly to the Book itself, 
and listening with purged ear and absolutely unpre- 
judiced spirit to its message. I have found that 
ninety per cent, of the difficulties of young men 
with the Bible are not due to the Bible at all, but 
to the theories of men about its composition or 
inspiration, its theology or interpretation. As the 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 5 

true and progressive artist goes straight to a land- 
scape and sees Nature for himself; as the scientist 
investigates the facts, and materials, and processes 
of Nature at first hand ; so it is the direct face-to- 
face vision of the Book that is revealing. Suffer 
the Scriptures to tell their own tale to the spirit 
sincerely in quest of the truth concerning God and 
the soul, and you will not be long before you feel 
and confess their divine inspiration. 

5. Going thus with cleansed vision to the Book 
itself, we must next welcome every competent 
guide in fixing and expressing the sense of its 
contents. The Bevised Version of our English 
Bible should be preferred and its marginal readings 
consulted ; for they often contain better renderings 
of the original text, and disclose the writer's idea 
in its greater fulness and beauty. But we must 
not suffer marginal references and concordance lists 
to hide the differences of meaning through which a 
word has passed in its long history, or in which it 
has been used by various authors. Important as 
the letter is, the unity of the Bible is not of the 
letter but of the spirit. 

I ought to add that the volumes forming the 
" Cambridge Bible for Colleges and Schools " are at 
once one of the cheapest and most competent guides 
in this study. 



6 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

6. My experience and observation warrant the 
assertion that special advantage will be found in 
taking a gospel such as Murk's, or an epistle such 
as that of James, or a section of an epistle such as 
that on practical life and service beginning with 
the 1 2 th chapter of the Romans, or a limited period 
of Hebrew history like the Exile, and concentrating 
attention upon it, until its text is understood, its 
leading ideas grasped, and its spirit possessed. A 
little of the Bible well understood and thoroughly 
mastered will go further and help more than a 
cursory knowledge of larger portions of it. It adds 
to the interest of the pursuit, and confers such a 
command as enables the reader afterwards to engage 
in the study of other portions with increased suc- 
cess. For the Bible is a library, a collection of 
the masterpieces of the literature of a people, packed 
into the smallest compass, but belonging to widely 
separated periods, and comprising nearly all forms 
of literature, and therefore is best examined in 
restricted but related portions, aided by the "in- 
troductions" written by competent men. In this 
way we shall see the progress of revelation from 
the elementary and imperfect conceptions of God 
and of morality in the Old Testament to the 
full and perfect teaching of Christ Jesus ia the 
Gospels, 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 7 

7. Let me add in a brief closing word the eternal 
law that a definite spiritual aim and a strong sym- 
pathy with spiritual ideals are supremely necessary 
fur the successful study of the Word of God. We 
must go to the Bible to learn how to live the best 
life ; to see God in Christ reconciling us to Him- 
self, to enjoy Him and to serve Him, in serving 
Man, His child ; and therefore we must read 
humbly and devoutly as well as reflectively. Our 
prayer must be : " Open Thou mine eyes, that I 
may behold wondrous things out of Thy law." 



II. 

Bt the Rev. 0. H. WALLER, M.A^ 

Principal of St. John's HaM, Highbury. 

Several times during the last few years I have 
heard a saying repeated, which, I believe, originally 
came from the lips of the Eev. Charles Simeon, 
that justification comes by faith, but knowledge of 
the Bible comes by works. This saying may have 
more than one interpretation. I cannot say how 
much Mr. Simeon meant by it, but I see two or 
three meanings. 

The first is, that the Bible is a book that cannot 
be known without study. No book that is worth 
much can be. And the study of books is pretty 
nearly the same thing always — first textual, then 
topical. If a book can be learned by heart, un- 
questionably that is the best way of knowing it. 
It has advantages which cannot be surpassed. I 
have heard a saying of one of our English kings — 
George III., if I am not mistaken — that no man 
knew the laws of England ; but the difference 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. g 

between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer was this, 
that a good lawyer knew where to look for the law 
on any given question, and a bad lawyer did not. 
So with the Bible ; a good Bible-student knows 
where to look for what the Bible says on any sub- 
ject, a bad student does not. But a man who had 
learned the whole Scripture, or any one book of 
the Scripture, by heart, would know without looking. 
And a book of Scripture is always a sample of the 
whole. Before now, when I have had to pass an 
examination on a 3pecial book of the New Testa- 
ment, and was pressed for time, so that I could not 
work up the interpretation with the usual helps, I 
have learned the text of the book by heart, and so 
gone in for the examination. This is better than 
having the book itself before one. With the text 
before you, you must still turn over the pages and 
pick out references. With the text in your memory, 
the mind does that for itself. 

But I do not say " Learn the Bible " for the 
sake of examination only. It is but few of us who 
are examined in the Bible as students. There is 
another examination, however, that is carried on 
through all our waking hours — an examination by 
the world, the flesh, and the devil, to see whether 
we know the Word of Truth sufficiently not to be 
deceived by Satan's lies. There is no concordance 



io HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

to temptations ; if there were, it would not be a 
pocket volume. " The sword of the Spirit, which 
is the "Word of God," must be at hand always. 
Thai, portion of the Bible vjhich we knovj by heart 
measures the length and breadth of our sword. The 
rest is in the arsenal. 

I cannot but recall the dying words of a dear old 
college friend with whom I had sometimes studied 
the Scripture. To his brothers and sisters assembled 
round his death-bed he said, " I don't say read the 
Bible, but learn it, learn it ! " Nothing else will 
suffice. And, even so, we cannot dispense with 
the daily reading of the Bible. 

" Concerning things slowly learnt," it has been 
well said, that " when you have admitted them to 
be true and certain, you put them into your mind 
to keep (so to speak), and hardly a day has passed 
when a soft, quiet hand seems to begin to crumble 
them down, and to wear them away to nothing." 

It is so with all Divine things written on the 
heart of fallen man. There is an enemy for ever 
trying to rub them out, and write his own laws (or 
lawlessness) in their stead. Daj by day we need 
to take the truth that remains in our hearts to the 
Great Writer, and to the Book of the Law of God. 
that He may clean the inscription and deeppn the 
impression. He has begun to make. At this moment 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. n 

I have an illustration of this fact before me that 
makes my heart ache. Men, from whom one ex- 
pected better things, are talking and writing of our 
Lord's human nature, as though it made Him in- 
capable of bearing any certain testimony to things 
Divine. Have they never read the fourth Gospel ? 
I ask myself. I know they have. How is it, then, 
that it escapes their memory that " He whom God 
hath sent speaketh the words of God ? " They talk 
of His words respecting the prophet Jonah, for 
instance, as though He only used the story for an 
illustration, bearing no testiniony to it as a fact. 
Do they forget that He said, " The men at Nineveh 
shall rise in the judgment with the men of this 
generation, and shall condemn it ; for they repented 
at the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater 
than Jonah is here ? " How can the story of Jonah 
be a fiction if these words are true ? That a man 
who knows the Gospels, and believes in our Lord 
Jesus Christ, should take that saying to be the 
utterance of one who simply believed the Old Testa- 
ment by reason of His limited knowledge, is little 
short of temporary insanity. If He spoke as an 
ordinary man, how did He know what would 
happen on the Day of Judgment ? If He was 
more than man, how could He be mistaken on the 
question whether the story of Jonah was true ? 



12 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

If He was God, how could He speak of it as true, 
knowing it to be false ? 

That able and generally believing men should 
commit themselves to such theories as this is an 
illustration of the way in which illusions can fasten 
upon the mind when the exac: tex: of Scripture 
is not before it. " As Jonah was three davs and 
three nights in the whale's belly," if it stood by 
itself, might refer (conceivably) to a Jonah in his- 
tory, or to a Jonah in fiction. The words pre- 
viously cited could not possibly be so taken. They 
are consistent with one supposition only, that the 
story of Jonah's preaching to the Xinevites is true. 

I began with the statement that " knowledge of 
the Bible comes by uvrks." The illustration just 
given helps us to its second meaning. It is not 
simply by study, in the sense of intellectual labour 
at the text of Scripture, that we come to know it. 
A mathematician does not require to read a pro- 
position of Euclid carefully every morning and 
evening for fear he should forget that two right 
lines cannot enclose a space ; but there appears to 
be no limit to the absurdities which divines who 
only study Scripture intellectually can put forth 
and maintain. A man may be a learned critical 
commentator, and yet maintain that our Lord was 
less competent to distinguish fact from fiction than 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 13 

the learned critic is himself. How can these things 
be ? Daily reading of the Scripture as God's mes- 
sage to our hearts is necessary in order to maintain 
our faith in it as true. 

Knowledge of the Bible comes by works, in more 
senses than one. "This is the work of God, that 
ye believe on Him whom He hath sent" (John 
vi. 29). And again, " If ye believed Moses, ye 
would believe Me : for he wrote of Me. But if ye 
believe not his writings, how shall ye believe My 
words " (John v. 47). There can be no profit- 
able knowledge of the Bible unless we receive it 
as true. Knowledge of that which is not true is 
error and mistake. 

Nor must we pick and choose. If the Bible is 
partly true and partly false, who is to draw the 
distinction ? Scholars differ. What was true with 
them thirty years ago they give up and alter now. 
What is true now, by the same rule may be false 
thirty years hence. Who is to decide ? Not so 
the Bible. " The glory of man is the flower of 
grass ; the grass withereth, the flower fadeth : but 
the Word of the Lord endureth for ever." Some 
will say the Word of the Lord is Christ, not the 
Bible. I believe it is both. But take your choice. 
Let Christ be the Word of the Lord, and believe 
Him ; believe all He said, as it is set down in the 



14 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

New Testament, and you will find that it comes to 
the same thing. Re believed all the Scripture. Those 
who wish to get rid of the Old Testament, or to 
reconstruct portions of it, find this fact of our Lord's 
belief and acceptance of it so much in their way, 
that they are constrained to deny His authority, 
and to say that He only spoke and believed with 
the men of His own time. But where did He say 
so ? You may search the Gospels from end to 
end and you will never find Him saying that He 
believed the Scriptures. He knew, and had no need 
to believe. " He expounded to them in all the 
Scriptures the things concerning Himself" (Luke 
xxiv. 27). He knew "how all things were accom- 
plished, that the Scripture might be perfected" 
(John xix. 28). "He opened the understanding 
(literally ' expanded the mind ') of His disciples, to 
understand the Scriptures" (Luke xxiv. 45). If 
we believe Him, we cannot but believe the Scriptures. 
Those who believe not Moses must go on to deny 
Christ. The. truth of Scripture in this respect is 
wonderful. Until recently we have seen men pro- 
fessing to doubt Moses and believe Christ. Now 
those who believe not Moses are beginning to deny 
the perfect knowledge of our Lord. 

No profitable knowledge of the Holy Scripture 
■will ever come without belief in the Scripture. 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 15 

And belief in the Scripture means the most absolute 
reliance upon Him who " spake by the Prophets." 
" The Holy Ghost saith," what is written (Acts i. 
16 ; Heb. iii. 7 ; ix. 8 ; x. 1 5-17). " The testimony 
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (Eev. xix. 10). 
" I have given unto them the words which Thou 
gavest Me" (John xvii. 8). Thus the words of 
Scripture are the utterances of the Blessed Trinity — 
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. How 
they are so is a mystery. I receive the Scripture as 
God's word written, not because I understand how it 
was inspired, but because it comes to me from the 
prophets and apostles with that claim. Let me here 
state in a few lines of simple dialogue exactly what 
I mean, and how the Church comes into the ques- 
tion. There is endless confusion on the subject. 

What is that book in your hand ? " The Bible." 

What do you mean by the Bible ? " God's 
written word." 

How do you know it is God's written word ? 
"My mother told me so " (i.e., the Church of Christ, 
Articles xx., vi., xxi.). 

How did she know ? " She had it from the 
prophets and apostles of Christ, who delivered it 
to the Church as God's word in their own lifetime. 
She has kept it since, and knows it is what they 
gave to her." 



16 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

How did she distinguish prophets and . apostles 
from other men ? " They proved themselves to be 
God's messengers, because their words came to pass 
(Deut. xviii. 21, 22). Some of them did miracles, 
but all things that they spoke in the name of God 
came true (John x. 41, 42)." 

Were the words of the prophets always to he taken 
as God's word ? " Yes, when they spoke in His 
name (Deut. xviii. 18, 19)." 

These questions and answers contain a simple 
statement of the whole position. The inspiration 
of the writers of Scripture is not described, and 
cannot be. The authority of the Scripture is clear. 
And the authority of the Church is a perfectly 
distinct thing ; the authority of a witness and keeper 
of Holy Writ, and no more. A witness that these 
books, and no others, were delivered as the Scrip- 
tures. A keeper who has preserved the exact books 
so delivered. . 

If the question of various readings and different 
translations is raised, it does not really affect the 
authority of the Bible. A translation, in so far as 
it truly represents the original, has the authority of 
the original. A various reading only raises the 
question what the text of the book is in that place. 
The authority of the text, where you can read it 
with certainty, is not affected by the fact that you 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE, 17 

cannot read it in some other part. Practically, the 
multitude of variations is a safeguard. The great 
bulk of the sacred text has no variations at all, 
and may be taken as absolutely correct. I speak 
more especially of the New Testament. The whole 
of the vowels of the Old Testament are an addition 
to the written text. They represent a traditional 
reading supported by ancient versions. But we 
cannot forget that this traditional reading was given 
to us by a Church which had not received Jesus as 
the Christ, and He is the Alpha and the Omega of 
God's written word. That is, He is its true vocaliser. 
He makes the meaning and fulness of the whole 
book. When His ancient people receive Him as 
the Messiah of Scripture, it will be " as life from 
the dead." That there are treasures in the Old 
Testament which will then come to light, of which 
we have hardly any conception, I have not the 
slightest doubt. 

Have I strayed from the subject of Bible study ? 
I ask pardon if I have done so ; but Bible study 
requires enthusiasm, and nothing damps enthusiasm 
like any element of uncertainty or unbelief. I 
know, only too well, that the most excellent methods 
and principles will never make a Bible student of 
any one who does not absolutely prostrate his 
intellect before the Book. " Thou hast hid these 

B 



1 8 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
tiiem unto babes." There is enough in the Bible 
to exhaust the finest intellect and the longest life, 
if the student is a believer; and at the end he will 
depart hence with this, among other hopes, set 
before him : " I shall understand it all when I get 
there. But if it is God's Word, it will take eternity 
to understand it fully, so that I shall never want 
food for thought." 

Let me just name the two men that stand out 
in my recollection as my helpers to Bible study. 
Both are now in Paradise. One I saw often ; the 
other I only know from books. Some day I hope 
to see both of them, and to sit down with them at 
the feet of Him who has given us His Word. 

The first person who discovered to me the fact 
that the Bible is an interesting book, as well as a 
good book, was the late Dean Burgon. I have 
written and said so much about him elsewhere that 
I must not repeat it here. But I will offer every 
one an introduction to his method of study. There 
is a little book of his, called " The Servants of Scrip- 
ture," published by the Christian Knowledge Society 
(I think, at eighteenpence). Any one who will get 
that, and not simply read it, but try and work out 
each of the stories for himself from the Bible, so as 
to verify Dean Burgon's results, will certainly learn 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 19 

something of his method by the time he has finished. 
Then let him apply the same method to all the 
Scripture characters, good and bad. There will be 
a profitable study. When he has finished that, he 
will know what to do next. 

The other name I have to mention is that of Dr. 
John Duncan, whose life was written by Dr. David 
Brown. A second volume, containing " Sermons and 
Table Services," came from the same pen. " Recol- 
lections," by Moody Stuart, and Knight's Colloquia 
Peripatetica, complete the four volumes by which I 
know John Duncan. I suppose he was one of the 
first linguists, philosophers, theologians, and mis- 
sionaries of this century. Dr. Edersheim and Dr. 
Saphir will, I am sure, forgive me for saying that 
both of them are, more or less directly, the spiritual 
children of Dr. Duncan's missionary work among 
the Jews in Hungary, about the time of the dis- 
ruption of the Established Presbyterian Church of 
Scotland, more than forty years ago. 

Dr. Duncan was an intense student of Scripture 
and an intense believer in it. And he had travelled 
the whole round of belief and unbelief, from Seces- 
sion, through Material Atheism and Deism, back to 
Free Church Christianity in its brightest days. The 
recollections that others have preserved of his sayings 
formed an epoch in my life, when I first met with 



20 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

them. He taught me that it is impossible to pick 
and choose in dealing with Holy Scripture. The 
most absolute faith is also the most defensible posi- 
tion. The man who will not desert his post can 
never be driven from it, if his position is that of 
belief in the Scripture. And it is the believers who 
are the students, after all. 

It was Dr. Duncan who said he was " conscious 
of an air that comes from the Word of God. It was 
air to breathe" too. Not fog to mystify, learning 
to puzzle, criticism to perplex. No ; but air to 
breathe in this dark world, amidst the mists of 
error and the coldness of unbelief. The atmosphere 
of doubt is benumbing and deadening. The atmos- 
phere of faith is bracing and strengthening. In 
company with Dean Burgon and Dr. Duncan, I 
could always find this atmosphere. No doubt they 
have left successors behind them. There are the 
" seven thousand " I am sure. But I cannot see 
them. Sometimes I am tempted to say, " I, even I 
only, am left." I cannot really be so. But God 
helping me, I mean to stay, if I am. 



III. 

By Pkofessor ELMSLIE, D.D. 

The effective use of a tool rests on the workman's 
knowledge of its nature, limitations, and design. 
The profitable working of an industry depends on 
the manufacturer's accurate comprehension of the 
character and capabilities of his raw material. To 
study the Bible aright, the first requisite is a cor- 
rect notion of what the Bible is. 

We believe that God has revealed Himself to 
men. To the Scriptures we go to make acquaint- 
ance with that revelation. But the Bible is not 
itself the revelation : it is simply the record of the 
revelation. God has made Himself known not by 
dictating descriptions of His character, nor verbal 
dogmas about His nature and will. He came 
among men, acted in their lives, dealt with them 
personally in nature and in grace. Not in 
speech, but in life ; not in hearsay, but in experi- 
ence ; not in word, but in deed, they got to know 
God. And what they saw, heard, handled of the 



22 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

word of life, they have written, that we might have 
fellowship with them in their fellowship with God. 
Thus the Bible enshrines no cold, mechanical body 
of teaching, but a tremendously real experience of 
humanity, and an indestructible acquisition of the 
spiritual travail of our race. 

While it is true that God has left no people with- 
out a witness of Himself, it is equally certain that 
the people of the Bible have attained to an un- 
approached grandeur of divine knowledge. This 
attainment may be explained partly by racial gifts 
or historical influences, but cannot be accounted for 
except by a unique directness of revealing action 
among them. God manifested Himself in super- 
natural fashion, and men's spirits were inspired to 
clearly discern and interpret the divine. action. So 
the Historical Books of the Old Testament tell us 
how God dwelt among His chosen people, and dealt 
with them in judgment and in mercy, while the 
Gospels picture for us the perfect incarnation in 
Jesus Christ 01 the whole heart and mind and will 
of God for the world's redemption. The Prophecies 
preserve for us the impassioned battlings of men of 
God for God's kingdom on earth, as the Acts of the 
Apostles chronicle the foundation and upbuilding of 
the Church. The Psalms and the Epistles show us 
the response of human hearts to the converse of God 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 23 

with them, and the assimilation in thought and life 
of the contents of faith and hope and love. 

In its origin, therefore, the Bible is on one side 
all divine, on another all human. And these are 
not separate and apart, as if some of it were of God 
and some of man. The natural and the super- 
natural are in and in each other, as in Jesus we 
find God and man absolutely united in one Person. 
Moreover, in both cases, the divine is reached by 
us, not as we attenuate the natural, but just in pro- 
portion as we accept it in its perfect humanness. 
The gift of God in the incarnation has often been 
neutralised by good men, in zeal for our Lord's 
divinity, throwing His humanity into the back- 
ground. The same mistake is made in dealing with 
Scripture. If only we do in very deed, when we 
read the Bible, come into the presence of God, we 
cannot too much realise the absolutely real, natural, 
and human embodiment of the divine revelation 
enshrined in it. 

The knowledge of God mirrored in Scripture was 
a living acquisition. It was not imparted from out- 
side to men's intellects in words, but was fabricated 
with pain and toil in men's souls through actual 
contact with the living God. No living thing leaps 
into complete existence at a bound. It has a 
growth, a progress, a development from immaturity 



24 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

to maturity. "Jesus increased in wisdom and 
stature, and in favour with God and man." The 
Bible exhibits a real growth in men's knowledge of 
God through the centuries of revelation. Hence we 
shall be not shocked, but prepared to find partial 
conceptions of God's being and nature, defective 
apprehension of His spirit, and imperfect moral con- 
ditions in the Old Testament. It will not stagger 
but confirm our faith to recognise among such rude 
and ignorant scholars the presence and patient 
teaching of a Divine heart, that takes them as they 
are, leads them on slowly but surely to better 
things, and proves its power and Divineness by this, 
that while the gods of heathen religions have ever 
been dragged down to their worshippers' level, the 
God of revelation has, on the contrary, lifted His 
stiffnecked and wayward children ever upward and 
nearer to Himself. 

This natural, organic development of revelation 
furnishes many indispensable keys to the practical 
use of the Bible. For one thing, it is clear that 
we must not go to any part of the Bible and tear a 
text out regardless of its setting, and drag it neck 
and heels to give evidence in support of some pet 
doctrine — dealing with the Bible, to use Luther's 
graphic simile, "like a sow with a bag of oats." 
The use and value of anything in Scripture depend 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 2$ 

altogether on its place, origin, and circumstances. 
Many things in the Old Testament have been by 
Christ cancelled, modified, or superseded. Scripture 
does not consist of dogmatic declarations of absolute 
truth, not even of balanced statements, such as we 
have in a catechism or creed. Everything is not of 
equal authority. In the words of Baxter, "I must 
tell you a truth, which ignorant Christians fear to 
confess : the Scripture is like a man's body, where 
some parts are for the preservation of the rest : so 
the sense is the soul of the Scripture, the letter is 
but the body." The substance of the revelation is 
ethical and spiritual. Physical truth, science, philo- 
sophy, are not to be looked for in the Bible. What 
it contains is a message from God's heart to our 
heart. To miss that and seek these were to turn 
the children's bread into a stone. The God revealed 
in the Bible is the real God ; not an abstract con- 
ception of theology, but the living God ; the God 
with whom we have to do daily in our bodily, 
mental, moral, and spiritual life. What the Bible 
discloses to us is His actual dealing with us in 
our actual life, not a God in some non-secular 
sphere, clean away and apart from our ordinary 
existence. The supernatural action of God de- 
picted in the Bible is but His ordinary action 
made visible and articulate in the lives and hearts 



26 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

of ordinary men — ignorant, erring, aspiring, like 
ourselves. 

Study of the Bible has for its aim, then, to know 
God, as He is in actual life and experience. The 
book is as big as the world, and as strangely and 
wonderfully mingled in its contents. It is a mirror 
of human nature of unequalled truthfulness, devoid 
of exaggeration — optimistic or pessimistic. For 
success in business, the first essential is a just and 
adequate knowledge of human nature. As a text- 
book, nothing can compare with the Bible. Con- 
trariwise, there is no commentary to the Bible that 
can compete with a deep knowledge of one's own 
heart and the actual lives of men. Eead the Bible, 
seeking echoes in your memory, and you will wonder 
how it will begin to throb with reality and glow 
with light. This alone will carry you through 
much of Scripture adequately, but for other por- 
tions an acquaintance with their historical origin is 
requisite ; for example, the Prophecies. What a 
difference such knowledge makes, any one may 
prove by reading Mr. George Smith's " Isaiah," a 
book that stirs heart and intellect, and reveals a 
grandeur of power and meaning in the Prophecies 
that will surprise and delight the reader. Would 
we had a host of such works on both Old and New 
Testaments I But external aids can never replace 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 2? 

personal toil, and thought, and interpretation. Life 
gives up its best in all things only to patient, loving 
labour. Skim over the pages of Scripture, and you 
inhale an evanescent scent of hidden sweetness. It 
is the busy, lingering bee, that forces its way down 
into the deep chalice of the flower blooms, that 
carries the golden honey home, and gathers, against 
the dark days that must come, a rich store of com- 
fort, strength, and sustenance — 

u The heart's sweet Scripture, to be read at night 
When weary, and at morning when afraid." 



IV. 

By the Rev. H. 0. G. MOULE, M.A., 

Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge, 

I AM about to speak of studying the Holy Book in 
one portion of it only, and in one line. I make 
my suggestions in remembrance of the presence 
of the Lord of the Bible, our Master and our 
Lord, our Master and our Friend. He, "in the 
days of His flesh," was the supreme Bible student, 
the supreme lover, employer, and expositor of the 
Bible. Look again at the fact as it stands out in 
the four Gospels. See " this same Jesus " as He 
upheld Himself and foiled His enemy with the 
Bible in the Temptation, as He opened His message 
with it at Nazareth, as He quoted its syllables twice 
over on the Cross. Walk to Emmaus with Him, 
and see Him spending the whole Easter afternoon 
upon the Bible. He had come that morning from 
the grave, conqueror of death, Lord of life, and He 
came as it were with the Bible in His hands. 

He found around Him in His days on earth a 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 29 

mass of religious popular opinions. Some of the 
most intensely popular among them He trampled 
under His feet. But one of them He noticed only 
to sanction, sanctify, and glorify. It was the 
popular opinion that the Bible was divine, the 
word of God, bearing the authority of God. 

As for myself, I pray to my Master and Lord, 
and I trust Him to hold me now firm to the end, 
after many a struggle about it, in His opinion of 
the Holy Scriptures. I wish to enter into the rest 
and peace of the Bible, as He abode in it. There- 
fore, I accept the yoke of the Bible, as He accepted 
it. I wish to feel what He felt, that living incite- 
ment to the lifelong study of the Bible, which is 
bound up vitally with a firm persuasion that the 
Bible is supernatural. I wish to read it, as it is 
plain He read it, as being a book self-sufficient, in a 
deep and holy sense ; not, indeed, to the self-suffi- 
cient reader, but to the reader who prays in reverence 
and in simplicity that the Holy Spirit may dispel 
every moral mist, every hindrance of heart and 
will, from between Him and the meaning of the 
written Word ; and who is resolved to obey, to 
follow, the discovered meaning, in trustful honesty ; 
and who is taking pains over the Book. 

It is good to know how entirely this view of 
the matter was held by the old primeval Church 



30 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

writers, the "Fathers." There is simply nothing 
about which they are more really agreed. Atha- 
nasius loves to dwell on the " self-sufficingness " of 
the " divine Scriptures." Cyril of Jerusalem begs his 
hearers to test what he says by reading the canonical 
Scriptures. Chrysostom says that " the cause of all 
our evils is our not knowing the Scriptures." 

Such were the thoughts of the fourth century. 
We are almost in the twentieth. So more than 
ever we need to maintain our energy in Bible study 
by painstaking, prayerful recollection of what the 
Book is. We need to realise again and again that 
it is for ever what it was to the old saints, the 
divinely trustworthy, and therefore authoritative, 
account of God's mind and will, and above all of 
His mind and will about the Lord Jesus, and our 
relations to Him, our pardon for His sake, our life 
by Him, our peace, and power, and blessed hope in 
Him. So I lay before my reader a few words 
about just this aspect of Scripture and Scripture 
study, and I do so by giving a simple description 
of a sort of study that has been a great blessing to 
myself. It is this. 

Take one of the Epistles, or a main section of 
one of them ; for this purpose the shorter the 
better, within reasonable limits. By a little exer- 
cise of imagination suppose yourself to be reading 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 31 

some newly discovered relic of the age of the Apostles. 
A few years ago a learned Greek bishop discovered 
at Constantinople a small treatise, called the " Teach- 
ing of the Twelve Apostles," and it proved to be 
a long-lost book of the very early days of Chris- 
tianity. What microscopic attention that small old 
pamphlet received, and receives ! Every clause 
has been scrutinised; every allusion to doctrine, 
life, worship, weighed and discussed. And why? 
Just because it belongs to the first century, and 
because it speaks of Christ and Christians, and 
faith, and life, from the primitive point of view. 
Now, what I ask you to do is to treat some Holy 
Letter of the New Testament (which is older still 
than the " Teaching ") in much the same way ; very 
reverently but very simply. Place yourself before 
it as if it were new. Try, with something of the 
curiosity you would feel if it were new, to gather 
and arrange its doctrines and its morals. And 
then remember, over your results, that the book is 
the Word of God, by which you are to live to-day, 
and some day to die. 

Suppose we turn in this way to the Epistle to the 
Philippians. It is not long ; the golden pages are 
few. Let us try to lay it before us as what it once 
was — a newly given oracle of God. It was once 
read for the first time, perhaps in the house of 



32 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

Lydia. Let it be to us in some measure what it 
was then. And let us remember that it is after all 
new all the while, immortal with the breath of God. 
It not only " abideth " but " liveth for ever." 

Here is this primitive document then, this pre- 
cious " find ; " and we are going to investigate it. 
Let us classify our results under two heads ; first, 
its doctrine of Christ, then its doctrine of the Chris- 
tian and his life. And we may find a subordinate 
third heading, its account of the writer's own life as 
a Christian. 

I. The Epistle's Account of Christ 

a. We find hints of His human history. He 
was man, in reality and appearance (ii. 7, &). He 
died (iii. io) a death of suffering (iii. 10), the 
death of the Cross (ii 8). He rose again, for we 
read of the power of His resurrection (iii. io). 
And He so left this earth that a boundless exal- 
tation followed on His going (ii. 9), so that the 
heavens are now His abode, from which He is 
definitely expected to return (iii. 20). 

b. Going back beyond His human history, we 
find that, according to this primitive document, 
written well within thirty years of His death, He 
existed, existed indeed before He became man. 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 33 

He subsisted in the " form," or manifested glorious 
reality, of Godhead, equal to God (ii. 6). His 
becoming man resulted from His own wonder- 
ful act of will in that eternal state (ii. 7). He 
voluntarily took the condition of a servant, a 
bondservant of God (ibid.). He took the " form," 
the manifested reality, of such a servant. In this 
service He obeyed ; and He carried His obedience 
" to the extent of death " (ii. 8), a death which 
accordingly was in Him quite voluntary, part of a 
free undertaking to be not His own. And it next 
appears that the immediate result to Himself was 
an exaltation to supreme majesty as the once 
humbled and slain One ; He was proclaimed as 
" Lord," in such a sense as to be adored by the 
universe, to His Father's glory (ii. 11). For God 
is His Father; He is the Son of God (i. 2, ii. 11). 
Further, all " the riches of God in glory " are " in " 
Him (iv. 19). Further, in His heavenly glory He 
is still embodied, for when He returns He will 
transfigure His followers into likeness to " the body 
of His glory " (iii. 21). He is Almighty; He can 
" subdue all things," and subdue them " unto Him- 
self " (ibid.). 

c. As regards the relation between Him and His 
followers, it is so close that their whole life is said 
to be "in Him." He, the supreme Servant, is to 



34 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

them (we find everywhere) the sovereign Lord. 
His grace animates them (i. 2, iv. 23). The divine 
Spirit in them is His (i. 1 9). Their " fruit of 
righteousness" is produced "through" Him (i. 1 1). 
He is always near them (iv. 5). To suffer for Him 
is a special boon to them (i. 29). They live in 
expectation of the Day of His Eeturn (L 6, 10; 
ii. 16; iii. 20). 

II. The Epistles Account of Christian Life, Inward 
and Outward. 

Here we find, in our new-discovered first century 
document, that Christians are " saints " (hagioi), i.e^ 
men separated from self and sin to God (i. I, iv. 
21); brothers of one another (i. 14, iv. 21); the 
true Israel, citizens of the City above (iii. 3, 20: 
see Eev. Version of 20). So united are they to 
Christ that they exist "in Him," and are to act 
in their whole life as " in Him." Thus it is " in 
Him" that they are saints (i. 1) and brethren (i. 
14). In Him they are to stand fast (iv. 1), to be 
of one mind (iv. 2), to receive one another (ii. 29), 
to possess comfort (ii. 1), to glory (iii. 3), to rejoice 
(iii. I , iv. 4). It is solemnly promised (not merely 
wished), under certain most holy and happy con- 
ditions, that " the peace of God Himself shall "— - 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 35 

observe this " shall " — " safeguard their hearts and 
thoughts in Christ Jesus" (iv. 7). Wonderful words, 
but perfectly explicit ! In them, meanwhile, God 
has begun the " good work " which shall be carried 
on to completion till Christ's Day (i. 6) ; and God 
is now "working in them their willing and their 
doing, for the sake of His good pleasure, His plan 
and purpose " (ii. 1 3). And they on their part, in 
the deep heart-rest of such union and possession, 
are to " work out their salvation," to live out the 
life of grace, with the " fear and trembling " of holy 
reverence (ii. 1 2). They are " not to look each on 
his own things, but on the things of others," like 
their Lord (ii. 4), to hold together in loving, brave 
union for the Gospel (i. 28), to hold their own in 
the midst of bad surroundings as the children of 
God and light-bearers for poor sinful man, letting 
others know the message of eternal, blessed life (ii. 
16). They are to abstain totally from all sin, in 
the power of their life in Christ ; to do nothing for 
strife or vain-glory (ii. 3), to be "anxious about 
nothing" but in everything to tell their desires to 
God (iv. 6), to do all things without "grudgings 
and arguings " for self (ii. 1 4). Take all possible 
notice of these " alls " and " nothings " as you search 
and tabulate ; many a Christian life of our time 
would be transfigured by taking them as they stand. 



36 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

They are to be unblamable, unhurtful, unblemished, 
not in a dreamland, but in the hard realities of 
Philippian life (ii. 13); to bear fruit, " fruit of 
righteousness which is through Jesus Christ," so 
that at last, in the day of the Lord, they shall be 
" filled " with it — every branch loaded (L 11). 
They are to let their " moderation," that is, their 
forgetfulness of self, come out in common life, 
" known unto all men," in the power of the Lord's 
presence (iv. 5) ; to fill their thoughts with all that 
is good, straightforward, chastened, pure (iv. 8) ; 
to " mind " the things in heaven (iii. 20) ; to have 
the mind of Christ (ii. 5); to grow in spiritual 
perception, while growing in love (i. 9) ; to live a 
life summed up thus, " worshipping God by His 
Spirit, exulting in Christ Jesus, having no con- 
fidence in the flesh " (iii. 3). 



III. The Epistle's Account of the Writer's Life 

in Christ. 

Here let us forget that the writer is an Apostle, 
for he speaks just as a Christian. Well, what as 
such has he to say about himself ? He is one whom 
Christ has " seized," " grasped " (iii. 1 2) ; one who 
has found in Christ his highest Gain, and highest 
Object of knowledge, and supreme spiritual power 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 37 

(iii. 10), and his absorbing interest for life (i. 20, 
iii. 7—14), and his one possible way of acceptance 
at the bar of God's holiness. Yes, he must be 
"found in Him, having the righteousness which is 
of God on terms of faith" (iii. 9). This man is 
everywhere and always " in Christ." His " bonds " 
are " in Christ " (i. 13), his glory is in Christ (i. 26), 
his thoughts about the incidents of life are in Christ 
(ii. 19, 24). In Christ he has found out how to do 
all he has to do, in peace (iv. 13). Christ fills life 
now (i. 21), and when he dies he will be so with 
Christ that it will be "far better" than even this 
present Christ-filled life (i. 23). He is the willing 
bondservant, slave, of Christ (i. 1). His union with 
Christ so fills him with the power of peace that very 
irritating opposition does not irritate him, but gives 
him occasion for joy (i. 1 2, &c.) ; and the suspense 
about life and death in which he is kept only makes 
him speak of life and death as rival blessings (i. 21, 
&c). Meanwhile every natural feeling of the heart 
has free play in this supernatural atmosphere (ii. 27, 
28 ; iv. 10). And though "perfect" in respect of 
union and life in his Lord, he is not yet " perfected M 
as regards results ; the prize is yet to come (iii. 
12, 14). 

And so you shut the Epistle for the present, 
leaving much more for another time. The study 



38 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

has not taken hours ; it has only taken interest, 
purpose, and care. And what shall come of the 
effort? By the grace of God, sought in humble, 
holy submission, this shall come of it : a realisation 
in blessed newness and brightness that Christ is 
yours, that the springs and secrets of this sweet life 
in Him are yours, yours for to-day, for your actual 
daily path. You shall go with new thirst, and new 
expectation, to Him the eternal fountain ; " I live, 
I live — yet not I ; and therefore I can work, I can 
serve, I can bear." It will be with holy "fear and 
trembling," as in the heavenly Presence, yet also 
with a peace which passeth understanding, " keeping 
the heart and thoughts " — a keeping not meant to 
vanish outside holy times and places, but to do its 
strongest and brightest work in the midst of crooked- 
ness and perverseness, in the stress and under the 
burthen of your calling, as truly for you now as for 
the Philippians and their Teacher then. 



V. 

By R. P. HORTON, M.A. 

I distinguish two different ways of reading the 
Bible, one essential for all Christians, the other 
optional for most of us, though essential for some. 
I will call these two ways (i) The Devotional, (2) 
The Critical. For my own part, I keep at my side 
two Bibles. I use the one or the other according 
as necessity requires me to read in the devotional 
or the critical way ; and I find this method very 
helpful in marking the difference between the ways 
and reminding me of the separate use of each. 

(1.) The Devotional. This is essential for all. 
We must feed on the Word. Kead it on your 
knees. Let the atmosphere of the Spirit surround 
it and you. Ponder as you read. Turn up all the 
references, and bring the passages together. Who 
does not know the kind of Heavenly Illumination 
which soon begins to play upon the page, the gentle 
dew which soon begins to fall on the spirit, as 
verse after verse is set in the light of the sours 



40 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

need and bathed in the rays of the Sun of 
Kighteousness ! When you are reading in this way 
keep praying — turn your eye from the Book to 
God, from God back to the Book. Eealise that it 
is His way of conversing with you. When you 
are reading in this way, do not stop at the diffi- 
culties; go by them. It is of no use to stop in 
your approach to God because you see a boulder in 
the way, or because a swollen brook crosses the 
path. Press on ; let the boulder alone ; look a 
•moment and you will see stepping-stones across the 
brook. I should say for this purpose of devotion 
read first and foremost and most constantly, — and 
in this order, — the Gospels — the Epistles to Colos- 
sians and to Hebrews — the Psalms — the Book of 
Isaiah — and the Book of Deuteronomy — dipping 
into the other books as your marginal references tell 
you. These nine books are the high ridges of the 
Bible Land, and the spurs can be conveniently 
traced from them on this side and on that. , 

(2.) The Critical. The Bible is a literature, or 
two literatures in one. It can be understood on its 
literary side only by examining it in literary ways. 
Its use as a devotional book is not materially 
affected by the results of our critical researches ; 
but when we need to derive from it truths in a 
scientific form and doctrines in a theological system, 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 41 

immediately the critical study of the books of 
which the Bible is composed becomes of vast im- 
portance. It is everything to know the correct 
readings, the precise grammatical meaning of the 
text, and above all the dates and the manner of 
composition of the several parts. Whether this 
can be done with advantage by any but trained 
students is a question. It certainly should be 
done, however, to some extent by all who attempt 
to teach ; for to teach the Scriptures in ignorance 
of critical methods, and in defiance of all the re- 
sults of criticism, is to lay your pupils or scholars 
open to the unresisted assaults of a criticism which 
comes not from those who love the Bible, but from 
those who hate it. 

Such a work as Eyre and Spottiswoode's Variorum 
Bible puts the more important lines of the critical 
apparatus into the hands of every student. The 
English reader may in this way estimate approxi- 
mately the difficulties which arise from different 
readings or uncertainties of text. And to some 
limited extent, by the help of the Aids which are 
given at the end, he may consider the question of 
date and authorship in studying each book. 

For this critical reading of the Bible several 
general suggestions may be given. First — Take 
each book by itself, and try to realise when it was 



4« HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

written, and the particular place which it occupies 
in the Spiritual Development of man. Second — 
Eead the books of the Bible through, not in the 
order which they occupy in our English Bible, but 
in the chronological order otherwise determined. 
Third — Examine very carefully all parallel narra- 
tives or passages which occur with only slight 
variations in different books. Fourth — Study closely 
the quotations of the Old Testament in the New, 
and consider what light these quotations throw on 
the Scriptures which New Testament writers had 
before them, and their methods of using those 
Scriptures. 

If my readers will faithfully carry out these 
suggestions for a few months — not allowing their 
critical studies to interfere with their devotional 
use of the Bible — they will, if I am not mistaken, 
find their Bible springing into a new life before 
their eyes, and laden with innumerable unsuspected 
interests. It is possible that certain prepossessions 
about it may be altered, but it is unquestionable 
that their new way of regarding it will be as 
much more reverent as it is more intelligent than 
the old. 



VI. 

By Rev. CHARLES A. BERRY. 

It may be said that all intelligent and reverent 
reading of the Bible is so far a study of that Book 
of books. Indeed, before this new age ushered in 
its flowing tide of cheap primers and popular com- 
mentaries, when learning had not as yet caught the 
democratic spirit and consecrated its resources to 
the enrichment of the people, no other way to the 
mastery of the Scriptures lay open to the multitude 
save the meditative and pious perusal of the ancient 
page. Nor were the results then achieved by our 
unlettered fathers such as to be scornfully or pitifully 
passed over and carelessly forgotten. One thing is 
quite clear to the fair-minded observer, that with 
all their disadvantages in the matter of scholarship 
these men acquired an acquaintance with the Bible, 
an insight into its supreme truths, a mastery of its 
principles and lessons, such as made them a race 
of instructed, stalwart, earnest Christians. This 
kind of Bible-study was almost, if not quite, innocent 



44 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

of all such literary and critical questions as those of 
date, style, authorship, canonicity, and such like ; 
but it was, on the other hand, much more ti an the 
regular and devout reading of the Word for purposes 
of piety and praise. It was the study of the Book 
in the light which it cast upon itself, a study to 
which were brought methodical habit, patient investi- 
gation, sanctified common sense, and a mind prepared 
by prayer for frank and open impression ; and the 
result of such study was a marvellous mastery of 
the Divine truths contained in the Scriptures. It 
was, in a word, an investigation into the message 
rather than into the machinery of revelation, and 
although the pursuit was almost necessarily accom- 
panied by erroneous theories as to the origin and 
character of the several Scripture books, yet it did 
not thereby wholly miss the essential truths which 
the books contain. And for my part, much as I 
prize our wider and more exact knowledge of the 
Bible mak--up, I should count it a poor advantage 
were we ever to substitute mere literary and critical 
appreciation for this profound and sustaining know- 
ledge of the Scripture message. To grasp the revela- 
tion is more and better than to investigate the style 
of the writing. To catch and to be elevated by 
the inspiration is of greater worth than to master 
the several strata through which its channel is cut. 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 45 

And although, happily, there is .no necessary an- 
tagonism between the criticism of the documents 
and the reverent acquirement of the truth revealed, 
yet there is necessity to emphasise the caution that 
amid all our new studies of Bible-mechanism we 
require to give supreme attention to the study of 
Bible-contents, and while not resting in the mere 
devotional reading of " portions " on one hand, or 
in the critical inquiry into dates and origins on the 
other, to secure a mastery of the spiritual message 
which glows and grows from the first book to the 
last. 

With this prefatory counsel duly accentuated I am 
free to confess both the necessity and the pleasure of 
a more critical study of the Bible. Of course, such 
a pursuit, to be adequately carried out, demands the 
resources of the specialist and the devotion of a life- 
time. But one man may sow and another reap, and 
what is achieved by the specialist may be collected 
and conserved by ordinary intelligence. Fortunately 
learning no longer dwells apart in proud seclu- 
sion, and books are in the main reachable by the 
poor as well as the rich. One of the most marked 
and promising signs of our times is the zeal with 
which men of exceptional scholarship are scattering 
their precious pearls of labour among the people. 
And nowhere is this splendid service so marked as 



& HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

in the field -of Biblical exposition, so that earnest 
students may now gather a wealth of knowledge as to 
the history, authorship, and meaning of the Scripture 
books. They, therefore, who would be masters of 
the Book as well as of its clear spiritual contents, 
who would enlarge their perception of its beauties by 
an acquaintance with its history, need suffer no delay 
through lack of adequate guides and instruments. 
Eyre and Spottiswoode's Variorum Bible and the 
Cambridge Bible for Colleges and Schools have been 
recommended by many writers. An equal recom- 
mendation may be given to the " Comprehensive 
Teachers' Bible," published by Bagster, which con- 
tains more useful information and suggestion in small 

CO 

compass than most books of the kind. To those 
who are engaged, or are about to start, in this pursuit, 
let me offer the following brief suggestions: — 

I. — As to method. Begin by securing a general 
acquaintance with the chronological order of the 
looks. Absolute precision is impossible in this 
matter, as controversy still wages over the date of 
certain books, and even over the date of different 
sections of the same book. It is possible, however, 
to attain a working and approximate chronology 
of a great part of Scripture. It is important to 
do this. The present order of the books is a con- 
venient classification of subjects, but it leads to 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 47 

some confusion and misapprehension. Only as the 
order of date is secured can the student intelli- 
gently trace the sequence and growth of revelation. 
A good history of the books will help the reader 
at once to see new meanings in certain sections by 
placing them in their true historic setting. 

It is equally important that, as the next step, 
one book should be studied at a time, and so studied 
as to centre itself afresh amid the problems and 
events which occasioned its appearance. It ought 
never to be forgotten that most of the books of the 
Bible — notably the prophets and the epistles- 
were written to meet existing moods of thoughts or 
combinations of events, and that, to understand the 
eternal truths enunciated, it is necessary to know 
the temporal occasion of their utterance. No one, 
for instance, can enter into the splendid reasoning 
and the rich conclusions of the Epistle to the 
Colossians unless he has acquaintance with the 
schools of thought which had arisen within the 
Churches of the Lycus. The prophecies of Isaiah, 
again, are largely a sealed mystery to men who 
know nothing of Isaiah's contemporary history. 
Bishop Lightfoot, in respect of the former, and a 
priceless volume on Isaiah by Eev. Gr. A. Smith in 
respect of the latter, have made these respective 
books more new and more interesting than the last 



48 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

Dovel of the season. Study, therefore, one book at 
a time. Eead it through at one sitting. Go for- 
ward then to a critical mastery of its occasioning 
circumstance, and it will prove a treasure-house of 
unexpected riches. 

Another, though a subsequent, step is to trace 
the development in Scripture of one great idea, 
e.g., the Messianic Promise, the Kingdom of God, 
the Idea of the Church, the Person of Christ. It 
is clear, however, that one cannot wisely enter upon 
this department of study until progress has been 
made along the lines previously suggested. But 
when the time arrives for it, few branches of study 
will be found to yield more solid results. 

II. — As to object. On this point I have little 
to add after my opening paragraphs. Let me point 
out in a word, that to enter upon the study of the 
books for any avowed purpose beyond that of 
frankly mastering their contents will be to miss 
the real message and value which lie in them. To 
study for the sake of finding flaws, or to study 
with a view to supporting some preconceived 
theory of inspiration, will be to vitiate the whole 
pursuit. Let the Bible speak for itself. Make it 
your business to get at what is in it, and at all 
that is in it. You will find as the result, that 
though some of your theories may be knocked out 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 49 

of shape, you Lave a new and stronger assurance of 
the presence of God's Spirit in the writings of the 
" holy men." 

III. — As to spirit. Let your study of the Bible 
be prosecuted with a happy blending of awakened 
reason and of devout reverence. It is as true of 
the scholarly and critical as it is of the ordinary 
reading of the Scriptures that only to the well- 
balanced man will the record reveal itself. To a 
blind and mistaken reverence, properly called super- 
stition, the Bible shows none of its vast wealth 
of rationalism. To a hard and loveless heart it 
brings forth none of its spiritual beauties. Haydon 
painted a picture of Christ's entry into Jerusalem 
on the ass. It hangs to-day in the Catholic 
Cathedral in Cincinnati. Into it he introduced 
two figures in addition to the main subject — Words- 
worth and Voltaire — the one bending in reverence, 
the other tossing his head in scorn. The peculiarity 
of the picture is that, whether intended or not, the 
reverential figure bends so low, and the scornful 
figure poses itself so loftily, that neither can see 
the object of their respective emotions. It was to 
me a parable of how two opposite classes of men 
miss the gracious wealth of the Scriptures. Beware 
of that mock-reverence which hides God's Word by 
denying the right of reason to investigate and to 



50 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

inquire. But beware equally of that self-confident 
and irreverent rationalism which is not lowly enough 
to see God's treasures before its eyes. There is a 
one-eyed scepticism as well as a one-eyed faith. 
God gave us two eyes. Open them both, my 
friends : you will see more and better. 

I would like to close by urging the joy of 
Bible-study. George Macdonald once said he found 
some compensation in the prospect of old age in 
the thought that amid its quiet he might get time 
to burrow into his Shakespeare. Shakespeare to 
him kept meaning more and more. The earnest 
student of the Bible is not long in feeling a similar 
enthusiasm. The story of the Western editor who 
found a Bible on his desk and reviewed it as a new 
book is just a farcical exaggeration of the fact that 
the Bible is a new book to the man who begins to 
study it. And the mind that trains itself to the 
pursuit will not fail of inexhaustible reward. 



VII. 

By Rev. F. B. MEYER, B.A. 

This is a remarkable time for the circulation of 
helps for the understanding of the Bible. Most of 
us use Bibles swollen beyond their normal size by 
a large addition of explanatory and critical notes. 
We learn the map of Palestine almost as well as 
that of Great Britain, and have a very fair con- 
ception of climate, soil, customs, habits, political 
organisation, contemporary history, and the cast of 
thought. All this is good, excellently good ; but 
there is a corresponding danger against which we 
need to be on our guard, and which gives several 
signs of its subtle but deleterious influence. 

We are liable to place excessive reliance on these 
external aids. Our tables are strewn with maps 
and commentaries. No pains are spared to arrive 
at the correct rendering of a word or the true in- 
terpretation of the passage we may be studying; 
and when we have satisfied ourselves we are apt 
to suppose that we understand all perfectly, and are 



52 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

at liberty to pass on to something else ; whereas, in 
point of fact, we have only cleared the ground and 
taken the most elementary steps towards the true 
end of all Bible study. We have done no more 
than adjust our telescopes ; we have yet to gaze 
through them at the distant wonders and glories of 
the heavens. What sane man would suppose that 
he had exhausted the wealth of beauty and life of 
the tropics just because he had read through Kings- 
ley's " At Last " and Drummond's " Africa," and 
had mastered the scientific names of flowers and 
palms so as to be able to classify them correctly 
with their kinds ? 

We are sometimes more than half inclined to 
curtail our Bible-study if we happen to be away 
for a holiday and in some way separated from our 
usual appliances, and are shut up to the use of a 
cheap copy of God's Word, without references or 
notes, or any critical apparatus. And is there not 
a disposition to turn aside from commentary or 
teaching which deals exclusively with the spiritual 
aspects of Scripture with a feeling that there is not 
much to learn from any who are not thoroughly 
familiarised with the latest results of scientific and 
advanced criticism ? 

There is a profound mistake in all this. It is 
a good thing run to seed. Of course, we cannot be 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 53 

too careful to ascertain the exact form in which 
holy men spake of old, and sometimes great light 
is thrown on a passage by acquaintance with the 
exact conditions of time and place and circum- 
stance under which it was written. But we may 
attach too much importance to these things. We 
may be acquainted with all such facts and yet 
miss the deep spiritual lessons which lie beneath, 
as the kernel in the shell. And some shepherd on 
the Scotch hills, who has had none of our advan- 
tages, may be drawing supplies from the depths of 
Scripture for his inner life which have never even 
suggested themselves to our hearts. In fact, we 
need something more than mental or intellectual 
acumen. This is but the machinery which works 
the bucket from the well-head, and which may be 
more or less elaborate, but the bucket is something 
entirely and for ever distinct. 

After all, does it very much help us in the battle 
against sin and self, or does it afford very much 
strength to our inner life, to know that certain 
Psalms were written long after the days of David, 
or that the religious leaders of the Jews were 
broken up into four principal parties in the time 
of Christ ? We may know all such facts and yet 
miss the only bread of devout souls ; whilst others 
may be nourished on it and grow into the perfect 



54 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

stature of Christian manhood who would fail miser- 
ably in a critical examination. 

The obvious moral is, not that we should relax 
our acquaintance with the botany, zoology, allusions 
and contemporary history of Scripture, but that 
we should never be content until we have passed 
through these outer courts and knelt in worship and 
adoration in that inner shrine, where the shew-bread 
awaits us, and the sword of Goliath is hidden, and 
the light of the Shechinah glows. 

It should never be forgotten that our gains from 
Bible-study will be in direct proportion to the con- 
dition of our spiritual life. A man may be able to 
parse and scan and analyse the roll of sentences in 
Milton's " Epics" or admire the literary beauty of 
Wordsworth's lays, but if he is destitute of the 
spirit of poetry they will fail in their deepest 
ministry to his soul. It does not always follow 
that a geologist or botanist, intent on their special 
pursuits, will get as much from an afternoon's climb 
among the mountains as will some unsophisticated 
soul whose nature is attuned to Beauty, Simplicity, 
Purity, Truth, and God. A man may be a clever 
critic and yet miss the mystery of beauty, which 
defies analysis and floats as a sweet perfume on 
the air — an undefinable and spiritual essence. So 
if we come to the Bible merely as a literary produc- 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 55 

tion, and without adjusting the temper of our minds 
— if we are selfish and worldly, unforgiving and 
proud — we shall be as blind men who, with binocular 
in hand, stand unmoved before the landscape which 
lies outspread beneath the summer sun to the shores 
of the distant, gleaming sea. There are things in 
the Scriptures, and elsewhere, which are hidden from 
the wise and prudent and revealed to babes ; for so 
it has seemed good to the Father. The pure in 
heart are they who see. The poor in spirit possess 
the Kingdom. 

It is of great consequence, then, that we care- 
fully adjust our spiritual temper before we approach 
the study of our Bibles. It need not take long. 
But there should be a reverent bowing down of the 
soul on the threshold of the temple of Scripture ; 
a putting off of the shoes from our feet — a realisa- 
tion that the place where the Divine Glory trembles 
is most holy ground ; a cleansing ourselves of all 
filthiness of the flesh and spirit; a deep and 
hallowed consciousness of the presence of God ; a 
simple, childlike, humble, and obedient spirit, which 
listens with hushed awe, as the child Samuel in 
the sanctuary of old, for the accents of the voice of 
God. " Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth." 

Souls which love deeply best understand love. 
Pure eyes carry with them the flames of fire by 



56 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

which they see. Spirit recognises and reads Spirit. 
Those who have suffered have most sympathy with 
the inarticulated wants and thoughts of sufferers. 
So those who are most devout will be best able to 
understand the inner life and the spiritual conflict, 
the fears and hopes, the yearnings of desire, the 
pseans of triumph, and the wailings of disappointed 
hope which fill the pages of Scripture with their 
various and abundant expression. As the landscape 
expands before the view of the mountain-climber, so 
does Scripture open up and unfold in precise pro- 
portion to our elevation in spirituality of character 
and our fellowship with God. If you would see, 
climb. If you would learn of grace, grow in grace. 
If you would know, be. 

Perhaps obedience is one of the best methods 
of spiritual acquisition. If each reader of the 
Scripture would determine to put into practice 
each new precept and command which may start 
up in his morning reading, as a cover of partridges 
before the steps of the sportsman, perhaps noting 
them on paper as he proceeds for future self- 
examination and reference, but pledged to carry 
into practical effect each crossing of the t and dotting 
of the i which is. demanded by the voice of God, 
there would be an immense accession of spiritual 
insight. The accumulation of neglected commands 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBI^E. 57 

has gathered over our eyes as scales. Habitual 
disregard of God's will has induced a sense of 
unreality and vagueness to the whole tenor of His 
revelation. Mists born out of the morasses of our 
disobedience and neglect obscure our vision. We 
have not made use of what we had, and we have 
come into great danger of losing even that. And 
nothing would bring back more speedily freshness 
and enjoyment, and spiritual apprehension of God's 
Word, than the soul's pledge to itself to adopt the 
words of the Israelites and say, " All that the 
Lord hath spoken, we will do." The Lord Himself 
has given the one indispensable canon of spiritual 
knowledge, in saying, " If any man will do His 
will, he shall know." 

But, after all, these spiritual conditions are beyond 
our reach unless we are helped and taught by the 
Holy Spirit. We should never open the Bible with- 
out first lifting up our hearts to Him in heartfelt 
ejaculatory prayer that He would induce within us 
that holy and receptive frame of mind which shall 
be as the softening of the clods of the earth for the 
reception of the precious seed. Ask Him to do as 
the photographer does to his paper when he prepares 
it and makes it sensitive to the touch of the light. 

And thus we are brought to our final word. That 
study of the Bible is an egregious mistake, certain 



58 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

to result in disappointment, which does not depend 
on the gracious teaching and help of Him to whose 
inspiration on the hearts and minds of holy men the 
sacred volume is due. He who first inspired can 
best teach the meaning of His own words. Authors 
are not always at hand to explain the obscure and 
difficult passages of their own books ; but the Author 
of Scripture stands beside the meanest and most 
ignorant of His students, ready to lead them into 
all the truth. Lift up your hearts to Him, seeking 
the Divine illumination and quickening. Beneath 
His touch rocks will yield water; pages that seemed 
blank will suddenly be full of meaning, as letters 
written in sympathetic ink turn black when placed 
before the fire ; a garden will bloom where all had 
seemed dry and uninteresting ; while tracks of barren 
territory will be found to cover the most precious 
ore. 

And He will do His work, not so much in the 
intellect, but in the heart. The eyes of your heart 
will be enlightened, and you will know. The deep 
things of God, which are only searched and known 
by the Spirit of God, are revealed to those who 
have received, not the spirit of the world, but the 
Spirit which is of God. It is when love abounds 
more and more that we distinguish things that differ. 
It is when we are spiritually-minded that we judge 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 59 

all things, though we ourselves are judged of no 
man. " Oh, Holy Spirit of Inspiration, who art also 
the Source and Fountain of Illumination, open our 
eyes that we may behold wondrous things out of Thy 
law, and that we may ever live in that sympathy 
with Scripture which is begotten by Thine abiding 
influence on the inner man. 



VIII. 

Bt Ret. W. J. DAWSON. 

The first gTeat need in the study of the Bible 
appears to me to be common sense. VTe have to 
recollect that the Bible is not so much a book as a 
series of books ; not so much an inspired book as 
a record of inspiration. TTe have in the historical 
books of the Old Testament a statement of the 
working of God in history ; but it does not follow 
that ali the base ani selfish acts of Jewish rulers 
were the human expression of the working of God's 
Spirit in men. Take, for instance, the story of Jael 
and Sisera. and the awful passion of triumphant 
vengeance which breathes in Deborah's song. Be- 
cause Deborah, in the lyric passion of the hour, in 
the tremendous tumult of emotion caused by the 
deliverance of Israel, pronounced Jael to be blessed 
among women, the older commentators have thought 
it necessary to justify the perfidy cf Jael and endorse 
the encomium which Deborah passed upon her. 
Xow, these commentators were, no doubt, most 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 61 

amiable and excellent men, who would have turned 
sick at the very sLjht of blood ; but because, in 
an excess of passionate patriotism, Deborah called 
a woman who had been guilty of the blackest 
treachery and murder " blessed among women," 
these writers feel bound to justify her, and have 
tried to do so. This may be taken as an example 
of the pedantic and casuistic method of studying 
Scripture, as opposed to the common-sense method. 
Secularist writers have seized on such follies in 
religious writers with avidity, and have not been 
scrupulous in pressing home their advantage. Nor 
can we blame them. Perfidy is perfidy, and murder 
is murder, for whatever end it may be wrought, 
whatever national service it may secure, in what- 
ever land or age it may occur. To suppose that 
the God who said " Thou shalt do no murder " ap- 
proved the act of Jael, is to accuse God of com- 
plicity in her crime. To justify it because it 
secured deliverance for Israel is to defend the most 
immoral of all axioms — the wisdom of doing evil 
that good may come. This is a sample of the peril 
to which a casuistical reading of the Old Testa- 
ment has exposed the Church. What we have 
to do in such matters is simply to use the 
power of judgment which God has given us on 
the Book of Judges as we should upon any other 



62 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

ancient record. We have to study it in relation 
to the period and people ; we have to learn what 
we can of how it was written, and why ; we have 
to bring to it an unbiassed critical discernment ; 
and, above all, we have to correct its spirit and 
morals by the spirit and morality of Jesus Christ. 
When we do this, the difficulties which sceptical 
writers make so much of vanish into thin air. We 
use our common sense about such a story as the 
murder of Sisera, and we see in the whole history, 
not something which we are bound to defend as 
essential to the existence of revelation, but simply 
a chapter in the spiritual evolution of the human 
race. Spiritual barbarism necessarily precedes spiri- 
tual culture. Such narratives have value to us 
to-day, not because of the spirit which inspires 
them, and which is utterly rebuked by the teaching 
of Jesus, but simply as records in the development 
of the world out of barbarism into Christianity. 

A necessary corollary of this position occurs 
in the public and household reading of Scripture. 
There are certain portions of Scripture which 
should never be read in public or before children. 
We honour God and do not dishonour the Bible 
in omitting them. The compilers of lectionaries 
really seem to have abnegated all right of private 
judgment in the methods on which they have 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 63 

arranged the Scriptures for public reading. There 
are heads of households, also, who read the Bible 
right through at family prayers, and would think 
they did wrong by omitting certain chapters which 
they cannot but feel to be offensive to all moral 
sense and delicacy of feeling. These errors dis- 
tinctly spring from ignorance of what the Bible is. 
Such persons forget that the Bible is many books 
and not one ; that the various books differ widely 
in their value and significance, and that there is 
no obligation laid upon the most devout lover of 
the Word to treat all the books with the same 
regard and use them for the same purpose. In 
other words, they do not apply their common sense 
to the Bible. 

When we turn from the historic books of the 
Old Testament to the Gospels and Epistles other 
qualities become needful, and the first of these is 
simplicity of mind. The great hindrance to a 
proper understanding of the Gospels is, that we 
approach them with all sorts of preconceptions, 
misconceptions, and mental reservations. The all 
but infinite human accretions which cluster round 
the Divine words of Jesus obscure their meaning 
and diminish their force. It is rarely that the full 
force of the words of Jesus is permitted to stream 
in upon the mind, and the reason is that we do 



64 ttOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

not approach the Gospels with a free and eager 
intelligence. We are like men who look at the 
sim through coloured glass : the pure light of 
the teaching of Christ is always heing modified 
and spoiled by our prejudiced discernment of it. 
Tolstoi, in his singular confessions of faith, has 
shown how easy it is for a man of great genius 
and profound religious feeling for many years to 
entirely misinterpret the teaching of Christ, and 
that precisely because he had not read the Gospels 
with a free intelligence. In other words, Tolstoi, 
in his earlier life, did what most of us are apt 
to do, accepted the traditional interpretation of 
Christ's words as the real interpretation, and so 
wholly missed their vital meaning, and never re- 
ceived into his soul the full shock of their sublime 
illumination. And Jesus foresaw all this when He 
said that we must become as little children if we 
would enter His kingdom. I do not, of course, 
mean that we are not to take the utmost pains to 
discover what Jesus Christ really did say. We 
should be fools indeed if we did not avail ourselves 
of the great toil of critical learning which has en- 
deavoured to ascertain the exact words of Christ, 
and to clear away the technical obscurities which 
have encumbered the sacred text. But what I do 
mean is, that, having done our best to know what 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 65 

Jesus really did say, we have then to receive His 
words in their plain, simple, obvious meaning. 
And in order to do this we shall often have 
to disregard entirely the traditional interpretation 
which the Church has put upon them. The mass 
of Christians have never done this ; if they had 
the history of the world would have been very 
different; if they would, the kingdom of Christ 
would soon come. 

And, personally, I may add that I have never 
got any real good out of commentaries. I have 
always found that commentators are profuse in 
their explanations of the obvious, and dumb before 
the real difficulties of the Bible. They are verbose 
when I want them to say nothing, and reticent 
when I am in most need of their counsel ; or, as 
one of the ripest Biblical scholars of our time has 
often put it in his class-room — 

"The commentators each dark passage shun, 
And hold their farthing candle to the sun." 

I have found, therefore, that I can understand 
the Go-pels best without their aid. I gladly avail 
myself of their scholarship that I may get a clear 
critical knowledge of the text, but when they 
begin to expound I leave them. The words of 
Jesus are so much of the nature of a personal 



66 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

message to the individual soul that the less we 
have of any human mediator between our souls and 
His the better for our understanding of His meaning:. 
In this respect, simplicity is only another form of 
common sense applied to Bible-reading. Eead the 
Gospels with the simple unperverted intelligence 
of the little child — with the common-sense attitude 
of mind which we should apply to any other book, 
and they will yield up their meaning to you. The 
only real difficulty in understanding the Gospels 
and most portions of the Bible is that we treat 
them in an unreal spirit ; we apply to them a 
method of interpretation which we should never 
dream of applying to any other books. 

It will be a great help also, I think, to recollect; 
what has already been said on the different degrees 
of significance and importance which attach to the 
different books of the Bible. The range of value is 
very wide. The words of Jude, for instance, are 
of much less importance than the words of Jesus. 
The acts of Jesus Christ are the acts of a great 
Example ; but it by no means follows that the acts 
of the apostles fix the same rule of conduct and are 
of the same binding significance. Many portions of 
the Pauline Epistles were designed to have a purely 
temporary use, and that use has long since passed 
away. Just as the division of the Bible into 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 67 

chapters and texts often mutilates the meaning of a 
passage, so the congregating together in one volume 
of many writings of widely- varying value has tended 
to confuse the reader as to the relative import- 
ance of the various books. It is here again the 
Church which is at fault in insisting, not only upon 
a verbal, but something like an equal inspiration for 
the writings of the Canon. It is almost a wonder 
that no one has yet ventured to include in the 
catholicity of his reverence the address to James I. 
which prefaces the Authorised Version. 

Finally, I would say that there are two other 
qualities absolutely necessary to the true under- 
standing of the deepest things of the Word of God 
— attention and spirituality. How many times Christ 
said, " He that hath ears let him hear ! " We have 
to wait upon God and listen if we would catch the 
deep inward music, the solemn breathing of the 
Divinest thoughts which are our heritage in the 
Word of God. Men do not read the Bible with the 
same habit of consecutive attention that they would 
give to any other book. They pick a chapter here, 
a chapter there ; they do not read a Gospel or 
Epistle right through at a sitting, and endeavour to 
master its line of thought or receive its full im- 
pression. They do not even give a single passage 
anything like the same patient study which they 



68 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

would cheerfully devote to a sentence of Plato or 
JJerodotus. This is why pulpit exposition is so 
necessary : all men have Bibles, but few read them ; 
and to atone for their neglect, and also as an easier 
thing for themselves, upon the whole they prefer to 
pay other men to read the Bible for them and tell 
them what it means. And what we need is the 
habit of attention : the listening ear that strains 
itself upward in the stillness of the spirit to catch 
the mystic whispers of the Holy Spirit, whose work 
it is to take of the things that are Christ's and 
reveal them unto us. There is a story told of a 
young preacher who went to an old one and com- 
plained that he could find nothing to preach from ; 
he had seemed to have exhausted the Bible ! The 
old preacher simply replied, " Sink your shaft deeper, 
and you'll come to the water ! " The Bible is so rich 
that the merest superficial study of it will yield us 
great reward ; but the eternal springs lie deep, and 
we cannot get at them without patience. Nor can 
we really understand the Bible without spirituality 
of mind. The things of God are spiritually dis- 
cerned. He who lives in the habitual contempla- 
tion of God — who lives as seeing that which is 
invisible — will find every chapter of the Bible an 
open window through which he looks into the eter- 
nal world. To him the Bible will be self-revealing. 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 69 

The voices which speak in the chambers of eternity 
will always echo in his heart. The higher and 
nobler intricacies of thought which abound in the 
Pauline Epistles will, to him, become clear and 
intelligible, because his own spirit will interpret 
them, and the Spirit of God will help his infirmi- 
ties. Piety is the great commentator; devoutness 
of spirit is the true parent of insight and the great 
interpreter. It is the saintly men who have best 
understood the Bible, for where all human genius 
and scholarship fail, spirituality presses forward, and 
discerns the deep things, and the daik things too, 
of God. And that again is precisely the declaration 
of Jesus, when He said that the pure in heart shall 
see God, and that he who did the will of God should 
understand the doctrine. It is, indeed, the entire 
reversal of every human axiom and precedent. But 
there it is ; we are not to know first and be after- 
wards ; we are to be first, and then shall we know. 
Let us be what Christ wants us to be, and our 
difficulties with the Bible will all disappear, and 
disappear for ever. 



THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 

By Prof. Henry Deummond, F. R. S. E. 

I will give a note or two, pretty much by way of 
refreshing the memory about the Bible and how to 
look at it. 

First: The Bible came out of religion, not religion 
out of the Bible. The Bible is a product of religion, 
not a cause of it. The war literature of America 
which culminated, I suppose, in the publication of 
President Grant's life, came out of the war; the war 
did not come out of the literature. And so in the 
distant past, there flowed among the nations of 
heathendom a small, warm stream, like the Gulf 
Stream in the cold Atlantic — a small stream of relig- 
ion; and now and then at intervals, men, carried 
along by this stream, uttered themselves in words. 
The historical books came out of facts; the devotional 
books came out of experiences ; the letters came out of 
circumstances; and the Gospels came out of all three. 
That is where the Bible came from. It came out of 
religion; religion did not come out of the Bible, You 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 71 

see the difference. The religion is not, then, in the 
writing alone; but in those facts, experiences, circum- 
stances, in the history and development of a people 
led and taught by God. And it is not the words 
that are inspired, so much as the men. 

Secondly: These men were authors; they were not 
pens. Their individuality comes out on every page 
they wrote. They were different in mental and literary 
style; in insight; and even the same writer differs at 
different times. II. Thessalonians, for example, is 
considerably beneath the level of Romans, and III. 
John is beneath the level of I. John. A man is not 
always at his best. These writers did not know they 
were writing a Bible. 

Third : The Bible is not a book; it is a library. It 
consists of sixty-six books. It is a great conven- 
ience, but in some respects a great misfortune, that 
these books have always been bound up together and 
given out as one book to the world, when they are 
not; because that has led to endless mistakes in the- 
ology and in practical life. 

Fourth: These books, which make up this library, 
written at intervals of hundreds of years, were col- 
lected after the last of the writers was dead — long 
after — by human hands. Where were the books ? 
Take the ISTew Testament. There were four lives of 
Christ. One was in Rome; one was in Southern 



72 HOW TO STUDY 7 HE BIBLE. 

Italy; one was in Palestine; one in Asia Minor. 
There were twenty-one letters. Five were in Greece 
and Macedonia; five in Asia; one in Rome. The rest 
were in the pockets of private individuals. Theo- 
philus had Acts. They were collected undesignedly. 
For example, the letter to the Galatians was written 
to the Church in Galatia. Somebody would make a 
copy or two, and put it into the hands of the mem- 
bers of the different churches, and they would find 
their way not only to the churches in Galatia, but 
after an interval to nearly all the churches. In those 
days the Christians scattered up and down through 
the world, exchanged copies of those letters, very 
much as geologists up and down the world exchange 
specimens of minerals at the present time, or ento- 
mologists exchange specimens of butterflies. And 
after a long time a number of the books began to be 
pretty well known. In the third century the New 
Testament consisted of the following books: The 
four Gospels, Acts, thirteen letters of Paul, 1st John, 
1st Peter; and in addition, the Epistles of Barnabas 
and Hermas. This was not called the New Testa- 
ment, but the Christian Library. Then these last 
books were discarded. They ceased to be regarded 
as upon the same level as the others. In the fourth 
century the canon was closed — that is to say, a list 
was made up of the books which were to be regarded 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 73 

as canonical. And then long after that they were 
stitched together and made up into one book — hun- 
dreds of years after that. Who made up the complete 
list ? It was never formally made up. The bishops 
of the different churches would draw up a list each 
of the books that they thought ought to be put into 
this Testament. The churches also would give their 
opinion. Sometimes councils would meet and talk it 
over — discuss it. Scholars like Jerome would investi- 
gate the authenticity of the different documents, and 
there came to be a general consensus of the churches 
on the matter. But no formal closing of the canon 
was ever attempted. 

And lastly: All religions have their sacred books, 
just as the Christians have theirs. Why is it neces- 
sary to remind ourselves of that ? If you ask a man 
why he believes such and such a thing, he will tell 
you, because it is in the Bible. If you ask him, 
" How do you know the Bible is true ?" he will prob- 
ably reply, " Because it says so." Now, let that man 
remember that the sacred books of all the other 
religions make the same claim; and while it is quite 
enough among ourselves to talk about a thing being 
true because it is in the Bible, we come in contact 
with outsiders, and have to meet the skepticism of 
the day. We must go far deeper than that. The 
religious books of the other religions claim to be far 



74 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

more Divine in their origin than do ours. For exam- 
ple, the Mohammedans claim for the Koran — a large 
section of them, at least — that it was uncreated, and 
that it lay before the throne of God from the begin- 
ning of time. They claim it was put into the hands 
of the angel Gabriel, who brought it down to 
Mahomet, and dictated it to him, and allowed him at 
long intervals to have a look at the original book 
itself — bound with silk and studded with precious 
stones. That is a claim of much higher Divinity 
than we claim for our book; and if we simply have 
to rely upon the Bible's testimony to its own verity, 
it is for the same reason the Mohammedan would 
have you believe his book, and the Hindu would have 
you put your trust in the Vedas. That is why thor- 
ough Bible study is of such importance. We can get 
to the bottom of truth in itself, and be able to give 
a reason for the faith that is in us. 

Now may I give you before I stop, just a couple of 
examples of how the Bible came out of religion, and 
not religion out of the Bible. Take one of the letters. 
Just see how it came out of the circumstances of the 
time. The first of the letters that was written will 
do very well as an example. It is the 1st Epistle to 
the Thessalonians. In the year 52 Paul went to 
Europe. He spent three Sundays in Thessalonica, 
created a great disturbance by his preaching, and a 



HO W TO STUD Y THE BIBLE. 75 

riot sprang up, and his life was in danger. He was 
smuggled out of the city at night — not, however, 
before having founded a small church. He was un- 
able to go back to Thessalonica, although he tried it 
two or three times; but he wrote a letter. That is 
the first letter to the Thessalonians. You see how it 
sprang out of the circumstances of the time. Take a 
second example. Let us take one of the lives of 
Christ. Suppose you take the life recorded by Mark. 
Now, from internal evidences you can make out quite 
clearly how it was written, by whom it was written, 
and to whom it was written. You understand at once 
it was written to a Roman public. If I were writing 
a letter to a red Indian I would make it very differ- 
ent from a letter I would write to a European. Now, 
Mark puts in a number of points which he would not 
if he had been writing to Greeks. For example, 
Mark almost never quotes prophecy. The Romans 
did not know anything about prophecy. Then, he 
gives little explanations of Jewish customs. When 
I was writing home I had to give some little explana- 
tions of American customs — for example, Commence- 
ment Day. When Mark writes to Rome about things 
happening farther East, he gives elaborate explana- 
tions. Again, Mark is fond of Latin words — writing 
to the Latins, who could understand them. He talks 
about " centurion," " prsetorium," and others. Then, 



76 HO W TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

he always turns Jewish money into Roman money, 
just as I should say a book, if I were writing to 
Europe about it, costs two shillings, instead of fifty 
cents. Mark, for example, says, "two mites, which 
make a codrantes." He refers to the coins which the 
Romans knew. In these ways we find out that the 
Bible came out of the circumstances and the places 
and the times in which it was written. Then if we 
will we can learn where Mark got his information, to 
a large extent. It is an extremely interesting study. 
I should like to refer you to Godet's " New Testa- 
ment Studies," where you will get this worked out. 
Let me just indicate to you how these sources of in- 
formation are arrived at — the principal sources of in- 
formation. There are a number of graphic touches 
in the book which indicate an eye-witness. Mark 
himself could not have been the eye-witness; and yet 
there are a number of graphic touches which show 
that he got his account from an eye-witness. You 
will find them, for example, in Mark iv. 38; x. 50; 
vi. 31; vii. 34. i r ou will find also graphic touches 
indicating an ear-witness — as if the voice lingered in 
the mind of the writer. For example, the retention 
of Aramaic in v. 41; and in vii. 34 — " Talitha cumi; 
Damsel, I say unto thee, arise." He retained the 
Aramaic words Christ said, as I would say in Scot- 
and, "My wee lassie, rise up." The very words 



HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 77 

lingered in his ear, and he put them in in the original. 
Then there are occasional phrases indicating the 
moral impression produced — v. 15; x. 24; x. 32. Now, 
Mark himself was not either the eye-witness or ear- 
witness. There is internal evidence that he got his 
information from Peter. We know very well that 
Mark was an intimate friend of Peter's. When Peter 
came to Mark's house in Jerusalem, after he got out 
of prison, the very servant knew his voice, so that he 
must have been well known in the house. Therefore 
he was a friend of Mark's. The coloring and notes 
seem to be derived from Peter. There is a "sense of 
wonder and admiration which you find all through 
the book, very like Peter's way of looking at things 
— i. 27; i. 33; i. 45; ii. 12; v. 42; and a great many 
others. But, still more interesting, Mark quotes the 
words, " Get thee behind Me, Satan," which were 
said to Peter's shame, but he omits the preceding 
words said to his honor. " Thou art Peter. On this 
rock," and so on. Peter had learned to be humble 
when he was telling Mark about it. Compare Mark 
viii. 27-33, with Matthew's account — xvi. 13-23. 
Mark also omits the fine achievement of Peter — walk- 
ing on the lake. When Peter was talking to Mark 
he never said anything about it. Compare vi. 50 with 
Matthew's account — xiv. 28. And Mark alone records 
the two warnings given to Peter by the two cock- 



78 HOW TO STUDY THE BIBLE. 

cro wings, making his fall the more inexcusable. See 
Mark xiv. 30; also the 68th verse and the 7 2d. Peter 
did not write the book; we know that, because Peter's 
style is entirely different. ISTone of the four Gospels 
have the names of the writers attached to ihem. We 
have had to find all these things out; but Mark's 
Gospel is obviously made up of notes from Peter's 
evangelistic addresses. 

So we see from these simple examples how human 
a book the Bible is, and how the Divinity in it has 
worked through human means. The Bible, in fact, 
has come out of religion; not religion out of the 
Bible. 



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-■♦• ♦ •■ 



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NOTES AND SUGGESTIONS FOR BIBLE READINGS. By 

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That the author of this work has a faculty of presenting the " Secret Things " that are 
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REFERENCE BOOKS 



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MISSIONARY PUBLICATIONS 



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Rev. Jas. Johnston, F.S.S . as a companion vclume ::> ;he ..epcrt c: 
:'erea:e ca Miisicus. Clcch, liraa. SU3SL 



.e Leuturv ^cu- 



GARENGANZE : or, Seven Years' Pioneer Missionary Work 

in Central Africa. By Fred. S. Arnot, with introduction by Rev. 

A. T. Pitrson, D.D. Twenty Illustrations and an cri~iaa: Map. 

Tire anther's cv-c trips acres;- Airier., entirely unarmed and unattended eucepr by the 
local and constantly changing carriers, and :n sues, raarue d ccatrast vrith many modern ad- 
venturers, strtnrly impress cne t: ash i: ancther Li-.-.arst:n= has art arrested arr.tnc; us. 
Traversing where no white man had ever been seen befo-e. and meeting kings and chiefs 

— v_. c • o, n &j pa^ca, C--~o« 

IN THE FAR EAST : China Illustrated. Letters from Geraid- 
ine Guinness. Edited by her sister, with Introduction by Rev. A. J. 
Gordon, D. D. A characteristic Chinese cover. Cloth 4to, 138 pages, 
$1.00. 

CONTEXTS. 



'•Gcrd-Eye : " 

Se::r. a Class. 

On the Way to C hir f 

Hong-Kong and Shanghai. 

First days in the Flowery Land 

Lpiaru baiciaes amrurst ""truer. 



_ en ^ s--s en a Chinese Canal. 
At Home in our Chinese " Haddon Hall." 
E y V» h e elb arr e rr r p_ An t any. 
Lite on a Chinese Farm. 
A Visit to the " Shun" City. 
Blessing — and Noed of Blessing — 
In the Far Easv, 

Rev. C. H. Spcrgeon, writes: 

" I have greatly enjoyed ' la the Far East. - 
armies c£ believers to invade the Flowry Lar e 

The author is to be congratulated fo. the taste and beauty with which these letters 
are ne-v put inte permanent ferns .-- full pare :_ irea mac .: Cacaa eahances ta.s ad- 
mirable gift book. 



bred bless. nr i:. the beta shtuid send 



NEW YORK : 
12 Bible House, A star PL 



piemir^Ji.I^evell 



CHICAGO : 
748 A 150 Madison St 



Popular Missionary Biographies. 

i2mo, 160 pages. Fully illustrated; cloth extra, 75 cents each. 



Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, 
writes : 

" Crowded with facts 
that both interest and in- 
spire, we can conceive ot 
no better plan to spread 
the Missionary spirit than 
the multiplying of such 
biographies; and we 
would specially commend 
this series to those who 
have the management of 
libraries and selection of 
prizes in our Sunday 
Schools." 




From The Missionary 
Herald : 

"We commended this 
series in our last issue, 
and a further examina- 
tion leads us to renew our 
commendation, and to 
urge the placing of this 
series of missionary books 
in ail our Sabbath-school 
libraries. 

These books are hand- 
somely printed and bound 
and are beautifully illus- 
trated, and we are confi- 
dent that they will prove 
attractive to all young 
people." 



SAMUEL CROWTHER, the Slave Boy who became Bishop of 
the Niger. By Jesse Page, author of " Bishop Patterson." 

THOMAS J. COMBER, Missionary Pioneer to the Congo. By 
Rev. J. B. Myers, Association Secretary Baptist Missionary Society. 

BISHOP PATTESON, the Martyr of Melanesia. By Jesse Page. 
GRIFFITH JOHN, Founder of the Hankow Mission, Central 
China. By Wm. Robson, of the London Missionary Society. 

ROBERT MORRISON, the Pioneer of Chinese Missions. By 

Wm. J. Townsend, Sec. Methodist New Connexion Missionary Soc'y. 

ROBERT MOFFAT, the Missionary Hero of Kuruman. By David 
J. Deane, author of " Martin Luther, the Reformer," etc. 

WILLIAM CAREY, the Shoemaker who became a Missionary. 

By Rev. J. B. Myers, Association Secretary Baptist Missionary Society. 

JAMES CHALMERS, Missionary and Explorer of Rarotonga 

and New Guinea. By Wm. Robson, of the London Missionary Soc'y. 

MISSIONARY LADIES IN FOREIGN LANDS. By Mrs. E. R. 

Pilman, author of " Heroines of the Mission Fields," etc. 

JAMES CALVERT; or, From Dark to Dawn in Fiji. 

JOHN WILLIAMS, the Martyr of Erromanga. By Rev. James 
J. Ellis. 

UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 

THE WORLD'S BENEFACTORS. 

JOHN BRIGHT, the Man of the People. By Jesse Page, author of 
"Bishop Patteson," " Samuel Crowther," etc. 

HENRY M. STANLEY, the African Explorer. By Arthur Mon- 
tefiore, F.R.G.S. Brought down to 1889. 

DAVID LIVINGSTONE, the Pioneer of the Dark Continent. 



NEW YORK: 
12 Bible House, Astor PL 



ple/r\ip^. I^euel 



CHICAGO: 
148 & 150 Madison St. 



f Of] WOF[K J\pO[/q CijlLD!\Eft. 



* ■» * 



Attractive Truths in Lesson and Story. By Mrs. A. M. Scudder, with 
:n:r:duction by Rev. F. E Clarkk, Prest V. ?. 5. C. E 12 mo; 

c.i±. s: 25. 

A ser.. = re :.:- - .- ?; :~s — ;:_- ;_. ::\: r ;:-.:=:-::.::. .-.:.;■.. - ~- : . :.••■ : r 
So::e.:es, for Children's meetings and for home teaching-. 

Not only for workers among children wil< this work be appreciated, bat mothers 
will find it a delightful Sunday afternoon volume for their children, suggesting an end- 
less variety ::' occupations," besides charming with its many beautiful stories. 

Children's Meetings and How to Conduct Them. By Lucy J. Rider, 
and Nellie M. Caiman, introduction by Bishop J. H. Ve t r. 208 
pp., cloth, illustrated, fi 00; paper covers, 50 cents. 

. veil has conf erre 1 a favor an the Christian public, especially that large 

part of it interested in the right training of children, in publishing this most practical 

work." — The Advance. 

"Just such a work as teachers have long wanted. It will at once take a place 

z~zz.z '-."-= i- iisre-sarles."' — .V, T. Observer. 

A— :-^ •.:.: :;;:::;::; :: ±.1; - : :~e art near '.-• ;.".". :r.~ es: '.-.~z~- Sur.r'av- 

school writers of this country. The book is a cyclopedia of helpful hints on the best 

plans of working among the children, plans suggested by the actual experience of the 

czz.:z.z z.zzs 

Clear as Crystal. By Rev. R. T. Cross. Fifty, five minute talks on les- 
sons from Crystals. 206 pp., beveled cloth, $1 00. 

"The Sermons belong to the five minute series, and are models of what can be 
done in so brief a space." — The Independent 

"Most interesting in style, and full of spirituality . We commend this volume es- 
pecially to teachers -who understand the value of fresh illustrations from nature." — 
The Christian ai "irk. 

Talks to Children. Bv Rev. T T. Eaton, D. D., with introduction by 
Rev. John A. Broadus, D. D , LL. D. 16 mo. cloth, $1 00. 

'•Dr. Eaton's Talk; appear to us to possess in an unusual degree the qualities 
which interest and pr □ fit young hearers and readers. They reproduce Scripture his- 
tory in the terms of modern life and give it both a vivid setting before the youthful 
imagination, and a firm grip on the youthful conscience. '* — The Independent. 

''"We have :xi~:ne: :a:s ~:r'.z - -; - :z:e- 5z :r.:tre5: ^ " - r. z :-:.'. — any : : : -:; 
of this kind, hit zee honestly believe that this -volume of Dr. Eaton 1 s excels them a — 
C-. Ktral Baptist. 

Tbe best book of the kind we remember to have seen. We commend it especially 
to parents reading aloud to their children Sunday afternoon." — Examiner. 

Short Talks to Young Christians, on the Evidences of Christianity. 

By Rev. C. O. Brown. 16S pages, cloth, 50c., paper, 30 cents. 

"Books that are really useful, on the evidences of Christianity, could almost be 
counted on one's fingers. One which has been singled out from a host of others by its 
plain straight forward sense is 'Short Talks to Young Christians on the Evidences 1 . 
by t.-_e Rtv. C. O. Brcw;- "—£: .Jay School Times. 

Conversion of Children. By Rev. E. P. Hammond. A practical volume 

replete with incident and illustration. Suggestive, important and timely. 

184 pages, cloth, 75 cents, paper cover, 30 cents. 
Young People's Christian Manual. By Rev. "has L Morgan. 32mo. 

booklet, 5 cents; 25 copies, $1 00. 

ACiter::::. - [aaual f:"r the instrur.io:: c:":ae - :::.: for use := Pas::rs' r.-ai-- 
ing Classes, Societies of Christian Endeavor, Sunday School, or Family. 

*1 have for years felt the need of something of this sort. I wish the Manual. 
might be wanted as widely as I am sure it is needed.*' — Josiah Strong, D. D. t author 
"Our Country." 



.JE££!L„. piv*W- W'.,-^:ee* 




111 Thomson Park Dnve 
Cranberry Township PA 16066 
(724) 779-21 1 1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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